A sweeping technology outage, apparently triggered by issues involving widely used Microsoft systems, on Friday grounded flights, disrupted businesses and knocked banks offline around the world — while in New York, hospitals, courts and even the jumbo screen outside the Macy’s flagship store at Herald Square were all affected.
CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm that lists Microsoft among its clients, said an update to its Falcon Sensor software, a system that offers “real-time threat protection,” is at the heart of the issue.
“CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted,” CEO George Kurtz said in a statement on X. “The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.”
Mayor Adams said outages were not a result of a “cyber attack,” and that most critical and all life safety services were up and running — including NYPD, FDNY and EMS radio and dispatch as well as 911 and 311 systems.
Traffic lights and water systems were also functional, the mayor said.
“FDNY IT and Communication teams implemented our redundancy procedures upon notification of the CrowdStrike outage,” the FDNY’s chief spokesman Jim Long said in a statement.
“Dispatchers and Field Units communicated over the department radios limiting any operational impact,” he continued. “Updates to follow as we work through this event.”
Police officers and other first responders similarly relied on radio as their department issued phones — while many desktop computer functions have been rendered unusable by the outage.
Janno Leiber, CEO of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, noted buses, subways, the Long Island Railroad and Metro-North trains are all running normally, though he noted some countdown clocks on subway platforms weren’t operating.
Memorial Sloan Kettering announced on its website that the hospital delayed some of its appointments and surgeries.
“At this time, we are pausing the start of any procedure that requires anesthesia. We are in the process of calling patients with appointments that are affected. If you have not been notified, please proceed to your scheduled appointment,” the posting advised.
The global tech outages threw New York state court operations into disarray, delaying Harvey Weinstein’s scheduled court appearance by 90 minutes and fully shuttering arraignments.
Handwritten signs posted on the doors to Manhattan Criminal Court arraignments early Friday read: “Due to the outage, this office is unable to answer questions” and: “Due to outage, system is down and information is limited.”
In a statement around 4 p.m., New York courts spokesman Al Baker said proceedings had resumed after a collaborative effort between city and state agencies.
“One by one, throughout Friday, a panoply of citywide and statewide systems pulled together in a recovery that allowed the steps necessary to fully resume the arraignment process,” said Baker, who added extra resources would be available to deal with the backlog of cases during night court hours.
Some Department of Buildings staffers were sent home to work remotely because they were unable to work in their offices, a source familiar with the matter told the Daily News.
The turmoil began for many late Thursday, with Microsoft users around the world hit with error screens — and persisted into Friday morning. A big screen outside Macy’s at Herald Square featured the so-called “blue screen of death” and a “Recovery” message.
An information screen informs travelers that train information was not running due to the global technical outage at Canal Street subway station July 19, 2024 in New York City. (Photo by Adam Gray/Getty Images)
Microsoft also acknowledged the outage, telling users Friday “the underlying cause has been fixed, however, residual impact is continuing to affect some Microsoft 365 apps and services,” adding: “We’re conducting additional mitigations to provide relief.”
The relief didn’t come soon enough for those traveling by air however, many of them gearing up for summer vacations.
As of Friday afternoon, more than 2,000 flights into, out of or within the United States had been canceled, according to FlightAware.com. That includes almost 500 flights across the three major airports in the New York City area. JFK, LaGuardia and Newark Liberty in New Jersey have also seen more than 1,200 flights delayed, according to flight tracking data.
Major U.S. carriers including Delta, United and American Airlines grounded flights Friday morning due to communication issues triggered by the widespread outage. And without access to check-in and booking services, long lines formed, snaking their way through airports in New York as well as around the world.
“The FAA is closely monitoring a technical issue impacting IT systems at U.S. airlines,” the FAA posted on social media. “Several airlines have requested FAA assistance with ground stops until the issue is resolved.”
Some travelers trapped at airports shared videos online of the chaos while others snapped photos of the blue error screens taking over giant displays in airports.
Elsewhere in the U.S., Alaska State Troopers warned that many 911 and non-emergency call centers were not operating, while the City of Fairfax Police Department in Virginia said it was experiencing technical issue. New Hampshire and parts of Texas also struggled with emergency services and calls, though they have since been restored.
Banks and financial companies around the world also have experienced issues, including the London Stock Exchange, which reported problems with its data and news platform.
German finance giant Allianz said it too was “experiencing a major outage that is impacting employees ability to log into their computers.”
Hospitals and medical facilities, unable to access patient and appointment information, have similarly been bogged down by the outage. In Great Britain, the Royal Surrey hospital declared a “critical incident” and had to temporarily suspend radiography treatment. The National Health Service in England, meanwhile, said it was experiencing disruptions in the majority of doctors’ offices. Non-emergency operations were also suspended at German hospitals due to the snafu.
In the U.S., the Harris Health Quentin Mease Health Center in Houston similarly canceled all elective procedures and outpatient care, while Mass General Brigham in Boston canceled “all previously scheduled non-urgent surgeries, procedures, and medical visits are cancelled today.”
According to Down Detector, there are also numerous outages across platforms including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft 365, Azure, Instagram, eBay, Visa, and AT&T. Retailers were disrupted as well, with payment processing struggles snarling business, though Microsoft and Visa said they were not affected by the tech chaos.
According to its website, CrowdStrike, which launched in 2012, is widely used by businesses and government agencies and currently has the “world’s most advanced cloud-native platform that protects and enables the people, processes and technologies that drive modern enterprise.” The company, based in Austin, Texas, has a partnership with Amazon Web Services, and its Falcon for Defender is designed to supplement Microsoft Defender to prevent attacks.
The White House said President Biden has been briefed on the matter, and that the administration is “standing by to provide assistance as needed.”
With Molly Crane-Newman, Chris Sommerfeldt and News Wire Services
